


a metaphor, not a fantasy

by persephassax



Series: FlashVibe Week 2017 [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Fade to Black, FlashVibe Week 2017, Fluff, Get Together, Holidays, M/M, Not quite pining, Oblivious, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 19:23:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13060533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephassax/pseuds/persephassax
Summary: Barry and Cisco start sneaking away on little weekend get-aways. But when the rest of the team finds out, it makes things weird. Luckily, they have the kind of friends who will see them through to their happy ending.





	a metaphor, not a fantasy

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a nebulous alternate season 4. Barry and Iris are just siblings, with none of their weird convoluted romance. Dumb boys are dumb. 
> 
> Not beta-read. (Lemme know if you can/want to do quick turn around editing.)
> 
> Title comes from ASW: 660. Prompt: Vacation.

It started as a joke. Barry and Cisco were bored one weekend, and they were sitting in STAR Labs after (literally) running some tests on Barry’s speed. Barry was sitting on the floor, his back to the glass doors to the exercise room, freshly showered in clean sweats, and Cisco was leaning back in his desk chair half heartedly pushing himself one way and then the other, staring at the ceiling.

Barry, his mouth moving faster than his brain, found himself saying, “I wish we could go somewhere fun for the weekend. Last time we saw the Legends all Mick could talk about was going to Aruba. I want to go to Aruba.” 

They remained silent for a half a second longer before Cisco sat himself up, and made eye contact with Barry. 

Barry stared back at him for a second, unsure what it was he had said. Then he saw Cisco’s growing Cheshire cat grin.

“That’s it,” said Cisco. 

“What’s it?”

“Let’s go somewhere for the weekend.”

Barry stared at Cisco for half a second. 

“Oh my god,” he said, hopping up. 

“I can breach us there, or you can run there and I’ll breach there after you find a safe spot for it or…” Cisco said quickly, his eyes bright with excitement. “What’s stopping us?”

Barry thought about for a second, excitement tapping his fingers on his thigh. 

“What if they need us back here in Central?”

“We’ll just breach right back,” Cisco replied confidently. 

Barry was nodding before Cisco had even finished his sentence. 

That first time they didn’t go far or stay for long. They went to Earth-1’s National City, it was coastal and warmer than Central at this time of year. Barry ran ahead to find a place for Cisco to breach to. They walked along the boardwalk, enjoying the girls running in tank tops, the fresh breeze off the ocean, and the warmth of the sun on their skin. 

Iris and Caitlin looked at Barry funny when he showed up at STAR Labs on Monday with a mild sunburn, and Cisco’s grin was extra bright as he looked at everyone and his banter with Harry was even more bulletproof than usual. 

Barry felt good and felt even better about how relaxed Cisco seemed.

* * *

 

The day trip to National City was only the beginning, as it turned out. 

Especially as the weather got colder, Barry and Cisco started looking for cheap places to stay anywhere and everywhere. With Cisco’s breach powers, they even saved on expenses, because they could breach through the groceries they needed from their apartments in Central City. 

Things came to a head when they really did end up going to Aruba. While they were on the beach, they got a metahuman alert on their phones, Barry hurried through their clean up, sand ending up everywhere from the superspeed, and they ducked into a little alley between two stores along the shoreside strip. Cisco breached them through to one of the lesser used corners of STAR Labs, and Barry speed dressed and sped ahead to the Cortex to meet everyone there. Cisco dressed as fast as he could and followed after.

He arrived to slightly raised voices.

“Where the hell have you been?” he could hear Iris asking, concern and frustration in her voice. 

“Cisco and I were just looking at something in the lab,” Barry was explaining. 

Cisco wasn’t sure when they’d decided to keep it a secret, but he knew that he didn’t like the idea of sharing the little trips they’d been taking with the others. It had been so nice going, just the two of them, wherever they wanted. They hung out, had movie marathons, walked around new cities, even visited museums and monuments. It was just something for the two of them, completely separate from the tangled lives they lived as part of Team Flash. 

“Then why is there sunblock on your nose?” was Iris’ retort. Her voice had the tone of a sibling who has successfully sussed out a lie. 

When Cisco rounded the corner and stepped into the Cortex it was to find Caitlin with a worried eyebrow scrunch watching Iris and Barry who were in the middle of the room facing off. Harry was leaning in the corner fiddling with some piece of machinery, but he was watching the proceedings in the middle of the room with an air of amusement. 

Barry looked over at Cisco when he walked in, a helpless expression on his face. Iris noticed where he was looking and rounded on Cisco. The engineer brought his hands up in the universal symbol of surrender. His twenty-five years as a younger brother had taught him when it was time to roll over and show your belly. 

He looked at Iris and decided to go with the truth.

“We were in Aruba,” he said with a shrug. 

Iris stared at him, and even Caitlin had moved from a worried expression to one of disbelief. Then Iris turned to Barry.

“Aruba?!” 

Barry looked chagrined and shrugged. 

“Yes?”

At that point Harry cut in.

“As fantastically entertaining as this has been, don’t we have a metahuman we need to be dealing with? Namely the one currently attempting to make off with all diamonds at the tasteless place down on 53rd?”

“Right,” said Cisco, moving to sit at his usual place.

Iris gave Barry the universal sibling glare and abrupt hand motion that meant  _ this isn’t over,  _ before coming to stand behind Cisco at his terminal. Barry flashed into his suit and then ran out the door before anyone could lay eyes on him, becoming just a blinking dot on the map Cisco had pulled up in front of him.

* * *

 

After the meta had been stopped and processed by the police, Team Flash rejoined in the STAR Labs cortex. Cisco was doing his best to look as small and unassuming as possible. Harry had seemingly taken some modicum of pity on him and was leaning on the table between the engineer and Iris who was glowering at him through in the spaces where Harry’s body wasn’t. Caitlin was back to looking worried, but she was standing on Iris’ side of the room, which Cisco took as a bad sign.

Barry zoomed in and pushed his cowl off, lightly flushed and smiling until he took in the tableau in front of him. Cisco breathed a sigh of relief as Iris’ attention shifted from him to Barry. She stood there, arms crossed, hip and head cocked to the side, her eyebrows raised to indicate how unimpressed she was. Barry wilted under her gaze instantly. He shot another semi-hopeful look at Cisco, but quickly looked away when Cisco shook his head. Harry stood up and did nothing to hide the return of his amused expression.

“Bartholomew Henry Allen.”

Barry wilted even more, which Cisco would have previously thought impossible. Iris just turned on her heel and walked into the hallway. Barry followed after her.

“Well done, Ramon,” came Harry’s voice from behind Cisco, who had unconsciously turned his chair to follow the action as it exited the room. “What have you and Allen gotten yourselves into this time?”

Harry didn’t bother to wait for an answer, having made his point, and grabbing his abandoned tinkering walked back across the cortex to get his tools. 

Caitlin came up to Cisco and sat down in Iris’ abandoned chair. 

“Seriously, Cisco,” she asked, with that adorable quirk to her mouth that said she was worried, but not so much that she didn’t also want to laugh at him. “What were you and Barry thinking?”

He looked at her a little helplessly.

“We just wanted to get away from everything for a bit,” he answered.

“But Aruba? Really?”

“I mean, sure it’s a little further than we’ve gone before, but we were back in time to stop the meta and everything!” 

At that Caitlin’s eyebrows rose and she lost that amused look.

“Further than you’ve gone before?”

Cisco bit his lip and then tried to smile winsomely at her. 

“It’s just,” he tried. “I mean, we figured that we can do some traveling. With the breaches and Barry’s speed, we could get to Paris and back before anyone noticed we were gone.” 

Caitlin gave him a disappointed look, and spun away. 

Cisco wasn’t sure where it kept going wrong.

* * *

 

Cisco had eventually left STAR Labs, exhausted from Caitlin’s disappointed looks, and Harry’s uncalled for good humor. He was half-heartedly stirring his bowl of reheated  _ arroz con refritos  _ and flipping through TV channels. He stopped on an old episode of a cop show he’d already binge watched during summer break freshman year of college. It was familiar and wrapped in a blanket and eating his dinner he was comfortable enough to stop worrying. 

Over the mumble of the television he noticed a knocking on his door. It was a familiar rapid fire sound so he set his bowl to the side and got up.

“I’m coming!” he hollered, hoping Barry would take the hint to stop irritating his neighbors. 

He unlocked the door and swung it open, and there was Central City’s very own speedster pouting on the other side. Cisco stepped back and waved him in. 

Barry scooted in just a little faster than humanly possible, and made a bee-line for Cisco’s couch. He instantly grabbed Cisco’s food and made himself comfortable, trying to wrap himself in the blanket while he scooped a forkful of beans and rice into his mouth.  

“I said, ‘Come in,’ not ‘Help yourself to my dinner,’” Cisco complained, swiping his bowl back. Barry gave him puppy dog eyes and Cisco knew he was going to cave, but he pulled it together.

“There are more beans and rice in the fridge, go heat them up, these ones are mine.”

Barry flashed him a sunny grin and sped off into the kitchen, ruffling the blanket in his wake. Cisco heard the fridge open, then the drawer, then the cabinet, then the microwave. Knowing the waiting would drive Barry crazy he settled in and turned his attention back to his show. He’d missed all the exposition and now they were cornering the perp in a suburban home, stalking in with guns at the ready and flak jackets on. He gave a little mental shrug - he’d missed all the good bits - and kept his eyes trained on the TV.

Eventually, Barry made his way back in and made himself comfortable on the couch. 

“How’d it go with Iris?” Cisco asked without looking away from the TV. 

He sensed Barry’s shrug more than he saw it; the shift of shoulders under clothing and the little sigh he let out.

“She was angry,” Barry said, quietly. Cisco had expected as much and waited for his friend to continue. “She was worried that something would happen while we were gone. Or that something would happen to us and we’d be super far away and they wouldn’t be able to help us.”

They let the blue light play over their faces for a bit, Cisco wasn’t really paying attention to the show anymore, they were shooting at the guy but he was grabbing one of the bystanders to use as a human shield, but he still didn’t look away. 

“I think she was angry that we were going away without telling anyone,” Barry added. “Or, you know, without asking anyone else. She hates it when we keep secrets.”

Cisco thought that was ironic, considering how many secrets Barry has tried to keep from Iris over the last few years. But he kept it to himself. He was still disappointed that everyone had found out.

“Is it weird that I’m sad that other people know about it?” Cisco finally asked. One of the team members on the show had come up behind the perp and cold cocked him. He was in cuffs now, while one of the female team members held the sobbing victim and the characters all shared heavy, significant looks over the heads of the victim, the perp, and the swarm of police who poured onto the screen. Cisco shifted a little in his seat, and finally looked over at Barry. 

Barry’s eyes were washed out by the TV light, and his cheeks looked extra sharp. He shrugged again and pulled a face.

“Me, too,” he replied and looked over at Cisco. 

Cisco grinned at him, a little relieved and elbowed him, making Barry grin back. They settled in, shoulders touching, as the credits split screened with an ad, and stayed that way for the next two episodes.

* * *

 

Things were weird for a while after the revelation that Barry and Cisco had been going on outings without telling anyone. Caitlin would get that little furrow in her brow that meant she was thinking about something. Iris was giving Barry something approaching the cold shoulder, given that they spent a solid portion of their time together and needed to talk about Flash stuff. Joe kept shaking his head at all of them, and once even patted Cisco on the shoulder, which probably shouldn’t have been as terrifying as it was. As always, however, it was Harry who was most insufferable. 

“You and Allen planned a little getaway for this weekend, Ramon?” he asked, just as Cisco stepped into the cortex with his first real cup of coffee of the day. Cisco rolled his eyes to heaven and prayed for the strength to keep his patience intact until he finished his cup of coffee, at least. 

“Whatever, Harry,” he said, sitting in his chair, rolling up to his monitor. He had some schematics he was working out the flow dynamics for and he was hoping to make headway on that before the day inevitably went off the rails due to some kind of meta disaster. 

It ended up a pretty quiet week on the meta-front, but that just meant that Cisco had to put up with an increasingly bored and therefore irritating Harry Wells. (It was times like these, where Cisco had the traitorous thought that he missed the old days of Eobard Thawne Wells, who had the decency to behave like an adult.)

* * *

 

The next day Cisco came in to find his computer with the browser pulled up, a dozen tabs open with information on sightseeing in half a dozen states, an article about the top five romantic places to take your partner, another about the best AirBnB experiences for a weekend getaway, the Blue Planet ranking of cozy B’n’Bs in the Northeast, and a buzzfeed article about the most beautiful beaches in the world. 

Cisco took a deep breath and closed the window. 

He took another and furtively reopened the window and saved the tabs on the cozy B’n’Bs and the beaches. 

When Harry came in later and started badgering him about their newest project, Cisco had a hard time slipping into their usual banter. Eventually Cisco stormed off the fifth time Harry threw a marker at him, and might have called the scientist a few choice names that he usually avoided.

* * *

 

The next day, Caitlin was giving him worried eyebrows, but his computer was blissfully undisturbed. It proved to be the calm before the storm, because every pile of papers he picked up, notebook he opened, or printer he used, proved to be riddled with travel brochures. Cisco steeled his will and calmly recycled each one. 

Harry was nowhere to be found, which was probably for the best really.

* * *

 

The next day, Harry greeted him with a “Do you have any idea how much plane tickets to Aruba cost on your earth?” and Cisco grabbed his recent stack of data print out and turned around and went home.

* * *

 

Cisco figures Caitlin must have eventually convinced Harry to lay off. For the rest of the week, he stopped finding brochures, travel information, and other various and sundry trip related information lying in wait for him.

But it didn’t really help. As the weekend approached Cisco found himself thinking about his empty apartment, his empty show queue, and the fact that he was probably going to end up getting his usual pizza order from his usual pizza place. It hit him like a ton of bricks that the trips he’d been taking with Barry were the most fun he’d had since life had really started to get hectic with Team Flash.

He did his best to focus on his schematics - he still wasn’t in a position to start tinkering yet - but his enthusiasm was seriously lacking. Eventually, Caitlin broke him out of a mindless reverie he was having about the long stretch of weekend coming up with a touch to his shoulder. 

“You’ve been staring at the wall for like 10 minutes, Cisco,” she said, dragging the other desk chair over and sitting so their knees were touching. “What’s going on?”

Cisco looked at her, the loose curls framing her face. He sighed. 

“I know everyone is mad about the trips we were taking, but,” he ran out of steam and had to think for a bit. “I guess we didn’t really think about it, but it was just so good to get out of Central City for a bit.” 

Cisco didn’t really want to think about the trips they’d taken. It was just making him more miserable. He looked down at the desk and prodded some of the papers that had amassed on it. 

“Things have been pretty crazy,” Caitlin offered. “But this feels like more than that.”

Cisco heaved another sigh.

“I just, you have friends from medical school and people you see on the weekends. You go to dinner with Ronnie’s family. I don’t see my parents much, and I don’t have anyone to hang out with. I was thinking about the weekend and how empty it’s going to be… When Barry and I were going places we just, we could be just walking around some place and we’d be having so much fun.”

Caitlin raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. She tipped her head to the side, studying Cisco’s face. His hair was falling in a curtain on the far side of his head, framing his chin and the bridge of his nose, the other side was tucked behind his ear. At the mention of the trips he’d been taking with Barry, a light flush rose in his cheeks and a smile threatened to evaporate his miserable expression.

Rather than saying anything just yet, Caitlin reached across and hugged Cisco to her. He brought his arms up to hold onto her arm, pulling her into him. He rested his head on her shoulder.

* * *

 

It was a strangely quiet week in Central City. Barry wasn’t sure if it was the weather or something. He sort of wished he could figure it out so they could maybe predict when they would actually have time to themselves.

He felt like he was dragging himself through the days. He was writing reports at work. He was swinging by STAR Labs to check on how Cisco, Caitlin, and Harry were getting on. He had dinner with Iris and Joe and Wally. It was nice to get together as a family, but he felt a step out of sync with everyone, despite the smiles and laughter they were all sharing. 

Eventually it was getting late and Joe started cleaning up, Wally jumped up to help him clean things. Iris and Barry ended up curled up on the couch. 

“What’s up, Bare?” she asked, her brows drawn together in concern. “You were quiet tonight.”

He scooted over closer to her on the couch, she put her arm up and around his back and he put his head down on her shoulder. She smelled familiar and warm, and the perfect mix of sweet and spicy that reminded him of home. 

He sighed. 

“Come on,” she cajoled. “Sad Barry is my least favorite Barry.” 

He rolled his eyes and smiled in spite of himself. 

“I’m just… Tired? I guess?” he told her. “I don’t know. I kept thinking this week of places Cisco and I had talked about maybe visiting. Or like, I’d be on Buzzfeed and there would be an article about those weird landmark things along the highway and I was going to ask Cisco if he wanted to see if we could go look at them, and then I remembered that we weren’t doing the trips anymore.”

Barry knew he was whining, but he felt like when he was small and Iris, who was always the sensible one, would sit him down and make him tell her what was bugging him. 

“You guys were really having fun, huh?” she prompted. 

“Yeah, it was just. It was something just for the two of us, you know? It wasn’t about The Flash, or STAR Labs, or metas. Just hanging out and not even doing that much. But we were having fun.”

He leaned more heavily into Iris and she patted the top of his head. He rolled his head up to look at her face and she looked down at him, still patting the top of his head. He gave her his most pathetic puppy eyes and she smiled down at him, and then planted a kiss on his forehead. He looked down at their hands and reached over for the one she wasn’t using to run through his hair. He played with her fingers and then they just sat there; quiet, in the warmth of their childhood home, holding hands.

* * *

 

Cisco’s finely tuned metahuman senses were tingling. Well, no, but Something was Up, he was sure of it. Caitlin and Iris kept going silent when he, or he and Barry, would enter a room, huddled in a far corner and they would instantly stop talking and look at them. Once, he even saw Harry standing with them. He gave Cisco the most shit-eating smirk he’s probably ever seen. 

It made Cisco nervous. 

His weekend had been predictably uneventful and not a little depressing. He’d watched more stupid television, including a terrible made for TV movie that involved a defrosted zombie mammoth. He’d thought about making  _ arroz con pollo _ and then gave up, ordered pizza instead. 

He had finished his schematics, barely, between the work last week and what he’d done for some hours over the weekend, and now he was in Harry’s domain with the piles of pieces of machinery trying to put the damn thing together.

Barry wandered in some time in the late afternoon, and came to stand next to Cisco, looking over his shoulder. He was a line of lightly vibrating warmth along one side of his back. He finished screwing in the piece he was working on and looked up at Barry. The speedster gave him a blinding grin and suddenly made a crinckled up face at Cisco and asked, “Is something going on? Iris and Caitlin are being secretive. And I think Harry winked at me earlier.” 

Cisco shrugged at him. 

“Your guess is as good as mine.” 

Barry shrugged back. 

“You want to go get dinner when you finish up here?” he asked, a hopeful note in his voice.

Cisco looked at him, Barry was bouncing on his toes and smiling at him.

“Yeah, gimme an hour and I’ll have all this put away.”

* * *

 

There was a Cambodian place not too far from jitters that Cisco liked. They made their way over, their breath puffing up in front of them in clouds in the street lights. Winter had fallen and the cold and dark were badgering at Cisco in a way that left him surprisingly tired at the end of the day. 

But the prospect of scallion pancakes, lort, and udon noodles was erasing that exhaustion from his body. He nudged Barry to try and press his own growing excitement into his friend. Barry wasn’t expecting it and slid a little on a patch of ice. He let out an indignant squawk and shoved Cisco with his shoulder. Cisco started laughing, big clouds of moisture coming out and making his cheeks cold with the added damp. Barry’s face, rosy with cold and bright eyed, caught the light of a street lamp and then Barry was laughing along with him and they were still giggling when they made it to the door of the restaurant.

* * *

 

They finally found out what was going on on Friday. 

Barry got a message from Iris that says:

**Come to STAR Labs**

He was pretty sure nothing was wrong, because Cisco’s metahuman app hadn't sounded the alarm, and there was no commotion in the station, and anyway, he was just about to get off shift at CCPD, which he doubted was a coincidence. Nevertheless, the text made his heart jump and his palms sweat, so he got going.

When he walked in, Iris and Caitlin were in the middle of the room, and Harry was lounging off to the side, fiddling, as always, with some mechanical part, but his smile was - possibly, maybe - slightly less sarcastic than usual. Cisco was looking around with an air of suspicion from his desk. He spun around when Barry walked in and his expression cleared for a smile.

“Sit down,” Iris directed.

Barry did what he’s told, looking over at Cisco in question. Cisco shrugged at him and looked back at the women in front of them. 

“You guys both seemed pretty down this week. So we got you this,” Caitlin smiled at them, her cheeks pinking up slightly as she handed them a print out. Barry reached out a long arm and grabs it, and he and Cisco scooted their chairs closer together to peer at the page. 

It was a reservation for a B’n’B in Vermont. 

“You guys have been working hard, and we know it’s good to have some time away from it all,” Iris explained. “So we figured you guys can head out for the weekend. Wally can handle anything that comes up and we’ve got things covered here.” 

She was smiling in a soft way that always made Barry feel like he’s a very cute, very stupid puppy, but also like she loved him best anyway. Cisco was giving Caitlin a searching look, but she just smiled back at him. Cisco and Barry looked at each other, the engineer shrugged and smiled, a little lopsided. Barry looked at the girls and said, “Thanks?”

“Just take the reservation and have fun,” Harry threw at them as he turned away from the scene. 

“Thanks for your input, Harry,” Cisco bitched, but he knew that it came out more fond than anything else.

* * *

 

The place was a converted Victorian house, nestled into a lightly wooded area. The trees were bare of leaves and little candles shown in the windows as Barry and Cisco walked up to the building. They traded glances and couldn't restrain their matching grins as they opened the door and made their way in. 

Night was falling, and opening the breach to get them into a reasonably secluded patch of forest had taken more out of Cisco than he expected. 

They showed their reservation at the front desk and the bored looking young woman behind the desk perked up. She gave them a little spiel about the history of the house and grabbed their key while leading the way up the narrow stairs to the second floor. 

When she unlocked the door and opened it for them, wishing them a pleasant stay, Cisco was surprised to see that there was a little sitting room, and a wide doorway where he could see the corner of a bed.

The whole thing was, maybe, a little too floral and adorable for him to be able to take it seriously, but it was also warm and elegantly lit and nicer than anything either of them had done so far. 

They dropped their bags by the door and wandered into the room to explore. Barry flopped down on the single, queen sized bed. Cisco noticed that there wasn't anywhere else to sleep, but put it out of his mind while he went to check out the bathroom. It had a full tub, and cute little soaps set out next to the sink. 

He headed back into the bedroom and lay down next to Barry, both their feet hanging down off the edge of the bed. Barry looked over at him, and Cisco looked back. 

“I’m kind of wiped,” Cisco admitted.

“Me, too,” Barry replied. 

“Share the bed?” Cisco asked, his heart speeding up a bit at the thought. 

A flush crossed Barry’s face, “Yeah, I suppose.” 

They took turns stripping down and changing into their sleep wear in the bathroom. Barry was wearing boxers and an oversized CCU t-shirt. Cisco was in his usual pajama pants. They got in on either side, and the last thing Cisco saw before he turned out the bedside lamp was Barry’s face, relaxed, gilded in golden light.

* * *

 

Barry is warm and comfortable when he wakes up. He’s almost too warm, and there is a comforting, if not entirely familiar smell of person next to his face. He opens his eyes, and the light in the room is a muted grey. He looks over, taking in the B’n’B room around them. The curtains are pulled back but it’s not too bright, he can see the flat grey-white of the sky and the slight swirls and half-shadows of snowflakes falling from the sky. There is a build up of snow on the sill and it’s sticking to the corners of the glass. 

He looks over to his side and see Cisco’s face, slack with sleep. A flush from the body heat build up under their shared covers. His hair is a dark, tangled halo around his head. A few strands are falling across his cheek, sticking near his lips, fluttering a little with each breath in and out. 

Barry realizes his arm is pressed against Cisco’s half-turned back, his skin is smooth and sleep warm. He doesn’t want to move, much less leave. Instead, blaming the early morning, newly awakened fog, he curls up against Cisco’s back, slinging an arm over his waist. He tucks his nose into the soft hair at the top of Cisco’s neck and breathes in the comforting smell of him, one he realizes he recognizes from pillows they’ve shared on their little trips. 

At the movement, Cisco stretches a little and then comes awake. Barry can feel the change in his breathing, and has little hopes that his own wakefulness will go unnoticed. So, instead, he presses his nose in a little harder. Cisco’s hand covered his own where it’s resting against the slight softness of his middle.  Barry lets the moment take him, and presses his lips to the back of Cisco’s neck.

“Hey,” comes his voice, sleep rough.

“It’s snowing,” Barry tells him. 

“Oh,” Cisco replies, something soft and wondrous in it. 

Barry nuzzles into the side of his neck, unable to resist the soft, brown skin on display. Cisco turns enough that he’s lying on his back and Barry is pressed up along his side. Cisco rakes his hair back with his free hand and then brings it over to rest on the side of Barry’s neck. 

Tentatively Barry leans in, and Cisco mirrors his movement. Their lips press together, dreamy in the soft grey of the dawn. Barry feels his eyes slide shut so he can focus on the feeling of Cisco’s slightly chapped lips against his own. It feels like an inevitable conclusion. Barry suddenly envisions a thousand kisses unfolding in the future, comfortable and soft like this one. Cisco rolls into Barry and for a hot second their hips brush and Barry realizes that his body is more awake than he thought it was, Cisco’s groin warm and the front of his pajama pants lightly tented and he gives in and pulls Cisco on top of him.

Cisco pulls away long enough to settle himself against Barry, meeting his eyes with a smile. 

“I like your thinking, Allen,” he says, and leans in again. 

Outside, the snow blankets the world, quiet and pristine. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> After writing a ridiculous SW epic, I'm hoping to write a bunch of silly, fluffy FlashVibe stuff this week. 
> 
> The hotel they stay at is an imaginary blend of the Black Walnut Inn in North Amherst, MA and the Porches out at MassMOCA in far Western MA. I just want to go to a cute BnB in Vermont, y'all. Quaint, wintery New England *w* And yes, that *is* my standard order at my local Cambodian restaurant. (Is it self-insert when you just make the characters live out your dreams?)


End file.
